When fearsome King Sarrum of Amata (John Shrapnel) visits Camelot to sign a treaty with Arthur (Bradley James), Gwen (Angel Coulby) forges a secret pact with the duplicitous ruler to have one of his men kill Arthur in "The Hollow Queen," premiering at 9 p.m. CT Friday on Syfy. Merlin (Colin Morgan), who has agreed to help a young Druid boy save his sister, is far from Camelot.

Is the Druid telling the truth? Will Morgana (Katie McGrath) finally succeed in taking out King Arthur?

In "The Hollow Queen," James gets to show how his five years of playing Arthur has honed his swordplay skills when Arthur duels with one of Sarrum's men.

"I wouldn't know how I would stand up in an actual sword fight, and I wouldn't want to find out, either, but I'm better than the average bear," James said. "It's been a huge bonus of the job to do all the sword fighting, and there's some stuff in Season 5 that I'm very excited to see.

"The challenge for us this season was to give the audience something to catch their eye. As opposed to just a generic sword fight, we've had to go that next step. Season 4 really kicked the action of the series into gear, so we knew in this final season we had to really take it up another notch."

After this week, "Merlin" returns March 8 to begin it final five episodes.

You want to own a piece of "Merlin" history? Like my Show Patrol Facebook page to learn how you can earn a prop from the series.

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Chicago's ban on plastic bags starts to take effect at many big stores Saturday, but an alderman who helped craft the law already is talking about changing it in order to thwart a few large retail chains that he says are trying to skirt the new rules.